It is known to provide apparel with lights, as I discussed in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,681. Lighting devices have been incorporated into a variety of hats, shoes (including athletic shoes and dress shoes), for either safety reasons, such as allowing the wearer of the apparel to see or be seen in reduced light situations, or to provide special effects as an element of fashion on the part of the wearer.
Lighted footwear has been increasingly popular over the last several years. As I described in my prior patent, existing lighted footwear falls into several classes. The first is a simple on/off switch by which a light is connected to a battery responsively by a manually-operated switch. The second class is reflected in such patents as U.S. Pat. No. 4,158,122, issued to Dana, in which an on/off switch causes an oscillator to run, producing a regular pattern of flashing lights while the switch is closed.
A third class of device is motion activated lights. The prior art generally teaches one kind of motion activated light, as best illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,848,009, issued to Rodgers. In this patent, in response to movement of the shoe, a switch is closed and a one-shot or monostable multivibrator causes a single pulse to issue in response to the closure of a switch. Until the pulse completes, further closures of the switch will have no effect, thereby eliminating the flickering of the light that would otherwise occur if the light was on for the small duration of time the motion switch was closed.
In my prior patent, I disclosed a new kind of lighted shoe that was a combination of a pressure switch coupled to a pair of monostable multivibrator circuits. In the arrangement disclosed therein, the circuit was designed to operate and cause a single flash for a predetermined length of time when the wearer of the shoe jumped or otherwise lifted his or her shoes from the ground. (A longer pulse occurred in a time-out situation where the shoe is lifted from the ground in a non-jumping motion.)
All the foregoing approaches are limited to either a continuous flashing operation, such as that disclosed in the Dana '922 patent, or to a pulse of predetermined duration, such as disclosed in the Rodgers '009 patent and in my prior patent.
For enhanced illumination effects, it would be preferable not to be limited to either a Dana-style oscillator or a Rodgers-style single pulse. A random flashing circuit, which has not been disclosed by the art, would enhance the visibility and the artistic effect of the flashing lights. This would be an entirely new approach to apparel lighting.
As discussed in my prior patent, any flashing unit used for apparel must be small and economical to make, and must be such as not to drain the battery prematurely. Any flashing unit must be such that when consumers are selecting lighted apparel, they can examine the operation of the flashing unit without having to put the apparel on. Thus, for example, consumers often purchase lighted shoes by picking them up from the display stand and shaking them and observing the lighted effect that occurs.
A random flashing shoe activated by a motion apparatus, all combined in a small package that could be mounted in an item of apparel such as a shoe or a hat that would operate with minimal battery drain, would also increase the salability of the shoes or other apparel.